BuddyPress.org

The “Name” field used to be called “Nickname” (I think), back in pre-1.0. You should have seen how much discussion *that* caused on IRC when we were discussing if that should be renamed.

just recognized that there is only ONE “Name”-field.

Why not use “First Name” and “Last Name” ?

No firstname/lastname because this does not work for a lot of international users.

BuddyPress uses the “display name” to know that they have filled out some profile information. It is the only *always* required field inside BuddyPress.

Because WordPress is centered around the “username” and uses the “nicename” for slug purposes, we’re stuck with those no matter what. I like having my username be short for easy log ins if I can help it of course (sometimes “jjj” is already taken.), but I like my display name be my fullname because it’s how people recognize me.

I don’t see a way around this any time soon. And like Andy said, internationally sometimes people have 4 or more names. I use my middle name, but having a “middle name” field isn’t always optimal either so I lump it in with my first name. (All those years of my mom yelling “John James you get over here this instant!!” must have stuck with me.)

You can rename the primary name field to be whatever you’d like, which is designed to alleviate some of the confusion. It lets you decide what that field means to your users. The “username” is the only thing they can’t change, so they’re using that for life.

@Erich73 I created a Last_Name and First_Name field so that I could do directory stuff just like you said. The only thing we’re stuck with is the Display name field, which some find annoying and some actually like. Considering all the over the top registrations we have all done before, this isn’t the worst. Facebook has it figured out, using emails as usernames and First name and Last Name when appropriate because it is more conducive to engagement. That’s the most important thing: what gets your users to engage – seeing LadiesMan269 doing an action or John Smith?

Hi Mike,

I still would like to know whether it would work to tell my users to write their “First Name” and their “Last Name” into ONE field called “Name” ?

like, e.g. putting the full name “John Smith” into the “Name”-field.

Typically my users would type “John space Smith”.

Will this be working technically (including the space) ?

This is my pet peeve with Buddypress! Wasted at least two weeks on this issue last Summer.

I use the same Beau Lebens email as login plugin that David Lewis found. So I wanted to get rid of username entirely and have basically only real name and email address on my registration form.

To integrate a mailinglist script I needed separate firstname + lastname. Buddypress doesn’t store them out-of-the-box. This is NOT a WPMU issue; WP/WPMU has firstname + lastname in wp_usermeta, but Buddypress simply refuses to synchronize those fields, so you can’t count on the data being there for other scripts (mailinglist, events, etc.).

Here’s my solution:

How to synchronize firstname+lastname between xprofile field_1 and wp_usermeta upon registration

And

How to autogenerate blogname (url) from Blog Title (or username from fullname!)

The Javascript I use for fullname->username looks like this

function copyinputuser()

{

var tmp = document.getElementById('field_1').value;

tmp = tmp.toLowerCase().replace(/^s+|s+$/g, "").replace(/[_|s]+/g, "");

tmp = tmp.replace(/[^a-z0-9-]+/g, "").replace(/[-]+/g, "").replace(/^-+|-+$/g, "");

document.getElementById('signup_username').value = tmp;

}

Unfortunately a lot of people sign up with only one name in the Fullname (field_1) field. Question:

Would anyone know how to validate/check the input for a two-part (minimum) name? You’d probably have to check for a space, make a space required. How would that script look?

No firstname/lastname because this does not work for a lot of international users.

Which countries are you talking about?! Name them.

With all due respect, this is such a bizarre argument. Not only the western world, but India, China, etc. all have no problem whatsoever using two or more names. Countries that use only one name or more than four can write their own plugins, along with the language pack etc.

More than two names is no problem; separating first and last name is primarily about having a first name available. Users can put their other two, three, four names in the second field.

If Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. have no problem requiring separate firstname and lastname, why is this such a controversial issue for Buddypress? Why make life difficult for 80-90 percent of Buddypress users just to prevent offense to 10 percent with different customs?

Here’s my idea on how to “solve” this dilemma.

1 – Add a field to the base group labeled: “First Name” and order it before the “Name” field.
2 – Create a function to add the value of “First Name” before the value of “Name” (including it in links) wherever “Name” appears in all templates.

OK. So #1 is easy.
Anybody have an idea how to code #2 so that alphabetical ordering will be determined only by “Name” value?

Is any of the buddypress builder an Automattic employee? Or is this project just supported by them? My Idea for the registrar page is to place alot of hlep icons that bring up an IN-PAGE pop up that explains it all.